What's on your bookshelf?

RaglanSurf

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Since I've got back into film photography over the last few years I've been adding to my photo library, either treating myself to the likes of the Magnum Contact Sheets book and the Vivian Maier, Street Photographer or putting my latest wants on the Christmas list and getting Sebastiao Salgado's Genesis, McCullin's Shaped by War or Walker Evans' American Photographs.

What have you got on your shelf that you'd recommend to others? Either photographic work or technique books, preferably film related but not exclusively.
 
Excellent question, I've got an Amazon voucher that needs using.

From the library I've got Joe Cornish 's First Light at the moment and I'm enjoying it, I've also had his Scottish mountain book a few times.
 
Ansel Adams - 400 Photographs
Andreas Feininger - Photographs 1928-1988 - Writings in German but the images are just awesome
Gene Nocon - Photographic Printing - A mix of technique and photographic work
David Noton - The Full Frame and Waiting for the Light - Not so much technique but more on the thought processes that went into the images. A mix of digital and film.
Roger Hicks - The Hollywood Portraits - Classy portraits with lighting diagrams and some background reading

Ansel Adams - The Camera, The Negative, The Print - The closest thing to having a lesson from the great man himself
Michael Langford - The Darkroom Handbook - Pretty much the bible for film devving and printing
Anchell - The Darkroom Cookbook - A collection of DIY dev chemicals

You should be able to find most of these on Amazon

I've also got a 1959 BJP Almanac and a 1923 Kodak photographic chemistry book. It's nice seeing adverts for Ilford HP3 and Gnome enlargers!
 
I the time honoured manner of the playground…

robhooley167 said:
Ansel Adams - 400 Photographs Got it
Andreas Feininger - Photographs 1928-1988 - Writings in German but the images are just awesome Haven't got it
Gene Nocon - Photographic Printing - A mix of technique and photographic work Got it Bought it when I did a City & Guilds Photography course in 1987, still one of the best books on printing IMHO
David Noton - The Full Frame and Waiting for the Light - Not so much technique but more on the thought processes that went into the images. A mix of digital and film. Haven't got it
Roger Hicks - The Hollywood Portraits - Classy portraits with lighting diagrams and some background reading Haven't got it

Ansel Adams - The Camera, The Negative, The Print - The closest thing to having a lesson from the great man himself Haven't got it But will get them this year when they crop up 2ndhand at a decent price.
Michael Langford - The Darkroom Handbook - Pretty much the bible for film devving and printing Got it
Anchell - The Darkroom Cookbook - A collection of DIY dev chemicals Haven't got it

You should be able to find most of these on Amazon

I've also got a 1959 BJP Almanac and a 1923 Kodak photographic chemistry book. It's nice seeing adverts for Ilford HP3 and Gnome enlargers! Haven't got it
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steveo_mcg said:
Excellent question, I've got an Amazon voucher that needs using.

From the library I've got Joe Cornish 's First Light at the moment and I'm enjoying it, I've also had his Scottish mountain book a few times.
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Good idea, I treated myself to Ansel Adams 400 photographs book with the Amazon gift voucher I got from TP for winning the Idiot challenge. I do like Cornish's work I should check out his books.
 
A good secondhand supplier that I've used for nearly all of those is Abe Books, they are an amazon subsidiary that do solely second hand books. I picked up the Adams technical books for about £3 each posted.
 
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robhooley167 said:
A good secondhand supplier that I've used for nearly all of those is Abe Books, they are an amazon subsidiary that do solely second hand books. I picked up the Adams technical books for about £3 each posted.
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(y)
 
Really want to get a copy of the Magnum contact sheets but at £53 for the cheapest I've seen, there's going to have to be a bit of saving up...
 
These are all oldies so not sure if they're still in print, but readily available used I think:
Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin - Remains of Elmet. The combination of Hughes' poetry and Godwin's photographs is magical.
Michael Freeman - 35mm Handbook. This is what got me into photography in the 80s. Still the best book on photo technique that I've ever read and I still refer to it now from time to time. His photos aren't bad either.
Adam Nicholson and Charlie Waite - The National Trust Book of Long Walks. Love Charlie Waite's landscapes.
 
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robhooley167 said:
Really want to get a copy of the Magnum contact sheets but at £53 for the cheapest I've seen, there's going to have to be a bit of saving up...
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I think I paid less than that from Pordes Books in Charing X Rd, I'm not sure but I think they do student discount as well.
 
I don't actually own any photo books at all. I think this needs rectifying. I really like Sebastian Selgado's work and, of course, AA is a true genius but i really need to look a bit further afield.
 
Still working my way through Lady Chatterly's Lover. Don't get much opportunity nowadays to hide under the blankets with a torch.....

....Oh !! Sorry wrong forum.:exit:
 
A selection of the occupants of my bookshelf, excuse the iPhone images!
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The best one I've got recently is "Here, Far away" by Pentti Sammallahti
Lovely B&W prints
 
orac said:
The best one I've got recently is "Here, Far away" by Pentti Sammallahti
Lovely B&W prints
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I saw a few of these on another forum, lovely, atmospheric shots.
 
Well I don't have any photographic books as I used to buy magazines and anything interesting would buy and keep that copy for reference.......but about 5 years ago threw all of them away. :(
 
Can really recommend the Hasselblad Victor series of books (A3 hardbound 'magazine') - released every 6 months & £15 a copy. There's some stunning images within!
 
I have loads of Issac Assimov and Arthur C Clarke stuff like the Rama stuff :)
 
I have
The Portfolios of Ansel Adams.
Ansel Adams in the National Parks.
The Photography yearbook 1989
The Photography yearbook 1990
The Leica and the Leica system Theo M Scheerer

I sold most of mine in the 90's to a local second hand book store including the camera, Negative & Print by AA which were truly inspiring books.
 
Ok, just used my large river voucher and bought a Joe Cornish book on Scottish mountains and a Charlie Waite book about b&w landscapes.
 
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Mr Bump said:
I have loads of Issac Assimov and Arthur C Clarke stuff like the Rama stuff :)
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I like the way you spelt both of Isaac Asimov's names wrong....:D
 
Excuse accepted and fully condoned...well done that man.:clap:(y)
 
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Jammy git.....
 
Some of my favourites are Magnum Magnum and Magnum Contact sheets. Contact sheets especially is brilliant to see the working through an idea by some incredible photographers.
A beautiful but completely impractical book is Steve McCurry: the iconic photographs. It's outstanding for repro quality and completely over the top for size
I love Salgado's Africa as well, and a slightly unusual book on steam trains in China
Lots if others on various genres and photographers, but these are my favourites
 
There are others and others! We have different reasons for embracing photography, and yours (read that as "everyone here except me") may be different from mine. But, if I were to meet myself some years ago and recommend books, my choice would be the following:

Story of Art, Ernst Gombrich
Perception and Imaging, Richard Zakia
Eye and Brain, Richard Gregory
The Camera\Negative\Print, Ansel Adams
Examples: the making of 40 photographs, Ansel Adams
History of Photography. Beaumont Newhall
The Photograph, Oxford History of Art series, Graham Clark
Post Exposure, Ctein
Basic and Advanced Photography, Michael Langford
Way Beyond Monochrome
The Elements of Black and White Printing, Carson Graves
Manual of Photography, Elizabeth Allen and Sophie Triantaphillidou

This is recommendation, not a list for reading pleasure. Graham Clark's book I did not enjoy at all - but I profited greatly from it.

There are a lot of others (I have several hundred books on photography) that are good, and a lot on my "to read" pile that I suspect may be just as good, but the above is my list, in suggested reading order. And you can tell a lot about my priorities from the list and the sequence.
 
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My current favourite photobook is Trent Parke's Christmas Tree Bucket. Very surreal, quite dark, and often very witty. Another is the Gagosian catalog of William Eggleston's exhibition there - it's a black box with three booklets, one booklet is a set of essays, the other two are photos from his Los Alamos project, and the reproduction is quite large at around 12x8'. The MoMa catalog of Garry Winogrand's work is really good too, some fantastic street photography in there. Just ordered Shinya Arimoto's Ariphoto Vol.4 from Japan, I'm a huge fan of his work and the tones he gets out of his Rollei/Hassy with TMAX and HC110 are just amazing. Reasonably priced with free shipping too.

The second edition of McCurry's Iconic Photographs is a bit of a disappointment in terms of reproduction really. Whoever laid it out seems to have forgotten that books, especially thick ones, have gutters, and the gutter in Iconic Photographs swallows whole people in some photos.
 
Just remebered I had this out the library last year, very interesting also.
Examples: The Making Of 40 Photographs: Making of Forty Photographs
 
steveo_mcg said:
Just remebered I had this out the library last year, very interesting also.
Examples: The Making Of 40 Photographs: Making of Forty Photographs
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Drat! I should have included that one. I'll edit my post and correct the typo at the same time.
 
Jao said:
A selection of the occupants of my bookshelf, excuse the iPhone images!
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12033156733_1a79a70abf_d.jpg

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12033669866_5db42a0eee_d.jpg

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Click to expand...

That's an impressive library, quite a few on there that I'd like to add to my collection.
 
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Those interested in Ansel Adams might care to look at "Looking at Ansel Adams" by Andrea Stillman. I found it illuminating.
 
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